


to raise our eyes

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Kink Meme, M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:39:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Kinkmeme prompt: "Instead of waking up right before Enjolras is shot, Grantaire wakes up to him being raped by national guard soldiers."]</p>
<p>"You were the leader here?"</p>
<p>"I am," Enjolras answers, stressing, just slightly, the second word. The officer is standing very close to him now, but he does not shrink away. Were his friends there to see him, even now as the end comes, they would find all their hopes rekindled: such is his radiance, in this place that stinks of gunpowder and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to raise our eyes

"Shoot me," Enjolras says.

There are twelve of them, a full squad, under an officer's command. Enjolras is in their sights, but the officer raises a hand. He moves swiftly forward, the inhuman mask of battle still on his face. "You were the leader here?"

"I am," Enjolras answers, stressing, just slightly, the second word. The officer is standing very close to him now, but he does not shrink away. Were his friends there to see him, even now as the end comes, they would find all their hopes rekindled: such is his radiance, in this place that stinks of gunpowder and death.

"Where are the bodies?"

Enjolras looks at him quizzically, and then with an open-handed gesture indicates the room, where they stand amongst corpses.

The officer drives the butt of his carbine into Enjolras' stomach.

"Play the fool and it will go worse for you, I swear before God," he spits. "I mean the bodies of your prisoners."

"Our friends!" a soldier shouts. The men are crowding closer to Enjolras and the officer, their faces twisted, their fists clenched.

"Our brothers, who you butchered," the officer says, his voice low and vicious. "We have heard of the work of your knives."

"Slander!" Enjolras says, blood rising into his pale cheeks, shifting to fight off another blow. "We had only one prisoner, a spy from the police. He was killed with a single shot. I would not have allowed--"

Anyone with clear eyes would know with one look at that bright young face that Enjolras has never told a lie, but the soldiers are clouded by battle. They seize him. Their hands are claws, tearing.

"Do you ask for our mercy?" the officer says. "Do you _dare?"_

He is struggling, fiercely. "I ask for the people's justice."

The officer hits him again, and the soldiers shove him to the floor.

Enjolras prepared himself to kill, made a study, in his mind, of killing; and did kill, when the hour came. He has made a study of death, too, prepared himself for it. Courage he did not have to study; that was his already.

Enjolras has not prepared for this. Within him is the spirit of revolution, not of war. The spirit of war is not a noble thing.

\--

The soldiers all wear the same face, black with powder and washed with blood, except that one of them carries a little more fat in his cheeks and the back of his neck than the others, some remnant of the softness of youth; and as two others hold Enjolras by the arms and the officer moves behind him, unfastening his trousers, it is this soldier who says, _"Mon capitaine,_ you cannot--"

The officer fixes him with terrible eyes. "This is not a man," he says, positioning himself. "This is a traitor to France. This is the murderer of the artillery sergeant."

"Give me the death I granted him," Enjolras cries, his voice, even now, as strong and as bright as the ring of steel on steel--and then there is an ugly sound from behind the teeth of the officer and Enjolras' face turns as white as a corpse. He does not make a noise, although blood flecks the corners of his lips.

The pudgy soldier's carbine falls out of his hand. His mouth opens and closes, silently, and then he says, "It is not right," his voice straining almost into a wail. "It is not--" His bile rises, choking off the sentence, and then he turns and flees the room, stumbling. As he staggers away, his hip jostles the table where Grantaire lies sleeping. 

Perhaps by accident, or perhaps with some desperate intention unknown even to himself, he jostles the table. Grantaire awakes.

\--

Jean Prouvaire once asked him, "Grantaire, have you _ever_ been sober?"

"Never by choice," he had said, and Prouvaire, ingenuous as a child, had asked, "Why?"

He did not answer, at the time. If Prouvaire were with him now, he would say: "Because the world has such things as this in it."

It occurs to him that Prouvaire is dead. They must all be dead. If it were not so, Enjolras would not be alone.

The officer moves bluntly; he's breathing hard but he makes no exclamation; it is not pleasure he is taking, it is revenge. The others watch solemnly as they wait their turn. Grantaire can hear soldiers' voices downstairs, and their boots on the floor above his head; there is no way out.

The fact that this is a hideous parody of Grantaire's most cherished dream, the fantasy where Enjolras rises to his touch, opening for him, his cheeks and chest rose-flushed, his eyes warm and wanting--even that is not the worst part. The worst is Enjolras' face, marble yet, but now the gray marble of a tombstone. The shock is almost gone from it, and nothing has taken its place. It is that emptiness that hurts Grantaire the most.

He cannot move. He is in Hell. Soundlessly, helplessly, his lips part, and shape themselves around Enjolras' name.

\--

Enjolras never asked him why he drank. Again and again, for days, for years, Grantaire worked to obliterate himself, ever more flamboyant in his misery, and when Enjolras looked on him, which was not often, it was with disgust. He groped for Enjolras' pity as he groped for the next bottle, and Enjolras had none, and Grantaire loved him even more for that.

There were reasons, of course; there were even times when he knew them, all of them; but, had Enjolras ever requested them, had he been pinned between the paws of the lion, he could have offered only one:

_I drink because you do not see, or, seeing, do not know, or, knowing, do not care._

\--

Enjolras sees him now.

\--

Enjolras is the only one who can see him. The two soldiers holding him are turned away from Grantaire, as are the others, watching. The officer is facing Grantaire, but his eyes are tightly shut as he huffs and strains.

As if he heard Grantaire say his name, Enjolras' eyes have cleared, and found their focus, and fixed on him. There is shame in them, and terrible pain, and Grantaire is grateful for all of it, because Enjolras is here, Enjolras is with him. It was only ever this man who could rouse him into life; it was only ever these eyes that could find his courage. Grantaire reaches for the pudgy soldier's forgotten carbine, and only Enjolras sees.

His hands have never been more steady.

Again, his lips shape words, without sound: _Vive la republique._ And then a few others.

The blue eyes widen. There are tears in their corners now--and yet, Enjolras' lips twitch--

He is trying to smile.

Grantaire levels the carbine. Almost imperceptibly, Enjolras nods.

\--

When it happens, the bullet goes through Enjolras and embeds itself in fragments in the chest of the officer, who screams and falls backwards, tearing at his uniform. One of the soldiers pulls Enjolras' head up by the hair, and sees the wound, and lets his body fall to the floor; and if Grantaire had time, he would see that body dressed again, and the golden curls combed and arranged, and his dignity restored, and a bier of flowers made around him; but the soldiers have turned and are advancing. He has never been quick but he is quick now, as the carbine spins in his hands and he leans his chin on the barrel. He has no second thoughts.

He has no thoughts at all: only a name, on his tongue, in his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> > The soldiers, we will observe, were full of wrath.
>> 
>> The death of the artillery-sergeant had enraged them, and then, a still more melancholy circumstance. During the few hours which had preceded the attack, it had been reported among them that the insurgents were mutilating their prisoners, and that there was the headless body of a soldier in the wine-shop. This sort of fatal rumor is the usual accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this kind which, later on, produced the catastrophe of the Rue Transnonain.
>> 
>> —v. 5 book 1 ch. 22
>
>> Must we continue to raise our eyes to heaven? Is the luminous point which we distinguish there one of those which vanish?
>> 
>> —v. 4 book 7 ch. 4


End file.
